Guessing Lamar’s ‘BracketBusters’ opponent

The entire Southland Conference season is mapped out for Lamar, but there’s one hole in the schedule left to fill.

Lamar will play a non-conference game in four weeks in the annual ESPN BracketBusters event.

The Cardinals are one of 142 schools scheduled to be paired up with another team from a “non-major” conference for a game played between Feb. 17-19.

The pairings will be announced Jan. 30, and Lamar has been designated as one of 71 road teams.

Lamar will not play any of the six Southland schools set to play home games, nor will Lamar return to Ohio for a second time this season.

That leaves 64 possible opponents for Lamar.

Here’s a look at five possible (but not necessarily likely) matchups:

1. at Butler: Just imagine. You’d have Hinkle Fieldhouse, the famed setting for Hoosiers. You’d have a Knight coaching in Indiana for the first time since Indiana University fired Bob Knight in 2000. And who knows, if the game is televised by one of the ESPN stations, you could even have the elder Knight calling a game in which his son is coaching. And don’t forget the opponent — Butler has back-to-back national runner-up finishes. Even if Butler is having a relatively “down” year, it’s still a school with major name recognition. But … as cool as all this sounds, don’t count on it.

2. at Oral Roberts: All home teams in this season’s BracketBusters are supposed to play a game at the visiting school during the 2013-14 season, so this only happens if the schools agree to waive the return visit. Oral Roberts is moving from the Summit League to the Southland Conference after this season, so these schools would have no reason to play a non-league game after this season. But if they did play this season, it would give Lamar a nice appetizer for future seasons.

3. at North Dakota State: Who wants to be in Fargo, N.D., in the middle of winter? (I don’t.) Only two spots separate these schools in the latest RPI rankings, according to RealTimeRPI.com. So, if RPI is a determining factor, this could be the Summit League school for Lamar.

4. at Weber State: Another website, RPIforecast.com, projects what team RPIs will be Jan. 30, the date pairings are announced. Lamar ranks 11th in projected RPI among the 71 schools set to play on the road, and Weber State (in Ogden, Utah) ranks 11th among the 71 schools set to play at home. So there. Now you know who Lamar will play. But not really. … Other schools near Weber State in those rankings are Cleveland State, Missouri State, Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Virginia Commonwealth. All are possibilities.

5. at Louisiana Tech: If travel distance is a factor, this is the non-Southland school playing at home closest to Lamar. These schools played several seasons together in the Southland Conference, so this might have some local appeal, but I’d rather see Lamar venture out a bit further.

There’s other intriguing schools out there — Creighton and Murray State come to mind — but they seem more likely to be paired against St. Mary’s or Wichita State or Northern Iowa. Those pairings could actually determine NCAA tournament chances for teams that fail to win league tournaments. But then again, you never know.